Observations Of A First-Time Visitor To Japan

I spent much of the week of November 9 in Tokyo. It was my first visit and I tried to observe what was going on around me. Like most everybody else, my first impression of Japan starts with the politeness and formality surrounding all encounters. The small, or even more formal, bow occurs between all subordinates and managers. While waiting for my bus at Narita airport I noticed how the supervisor at the bus stop bowed formally (hands straight down, back stiff, bend from the waist) to each bus driver as he pulled in to the stop. At the hotel, staff always made a slight bow to the guests when they served them. It continued from there.
Speaking of airports, I’ll never complain again about getting from an airport to the city. Narita is more than 60 km. from Tokyo. A cab costs about USD300, so most everybody takes the bus. In normal traffic it takes anywhere from 1½ to 2 hours. I was on a 9:40 p.m. bus, so it only took an hour.
Another common sight is the absence of foreigners. Far fewer visible minorities than in Hong Kong, for example. Also, strange that they have signs with product or store/office names in Roman letters, but nothing else. Why bother? Why get the foreigners’ hopes up and then dash them in a sea of Japanese text? They also suck you into the subway and trains with English come-ons, and then strand you at the ticket kiosk with no more Roman lettering.
The commuter trains are incredible. There are at least five different levels of service from local to super express. If you don’t know which one to take, you may find yourself bypassing your stop over and over. For the baseball fans, it reminded me of the time Pascual Perez was pitching for the Braves (he is also a former Expo) and could see the stadium but couldn’t find the exit off the highway, so he pulled over to the shoulder, left his car, hopped the fence and walked to the stadium. I was very lucky - the few times I took the subway and train I had a guide who showed me around.

Which brings us to polite. None of the Hong Kong pushing and shoving through the disembarking passengers as in Hong Kong. Again though, I wasn't travelling in high rush hour. Same view in the trains - girls on cell phones texting, boys on video games, adults plugged into who knows what.
Of course, the famous Tokyo work day makes me wonder, just when is rush hour? As my bus pulled into the city core at 11:00 p.m., I saw people walking out of offices and along the streets with their briefcases. In order to accommodate them, there are hundreds of small restaurants open late. If you have a problem with smoking in restaurants, stay away from Japan – no regulations against it. The workers, mainly men, go out in groups and stay for hours eating, drinking, speaking loudly (goes with the drinking?) and smoking.

The neatest thing I saw was at one restaurant we ate at – a huge, locking umbrella stand – room for at least 100 umbrellas. (See picture above.) You lock it in, take the key, and retrieve it at the end of the evening. If you’re drunk, you come back the next day and retrieve it. If you’re really drunk, the next day you ask one of your colleagues where it was you ate last night, go back and retrieve it. We could have used it on Wednesday when one of my colleagues lost her umbrella to someone who mistook hers for theirs. Sakano-san had to go home with the smaller version. Hint: when travelling to Tokyo, always bring an umbrella.
I feel for my colleagues in Tokyo. Their office is in a nondescript residential part of the city that no one wants to work in, making recruiting hard. It is on the Local line, so getting there requires a change of stations. There is nowhere to shop or eat – Macdonald’s is the second choice for dining out, behind the Italian restaurant.
Friday afternoon, we were in the middle of a meeting when someone came in and suggested we leave early, because President Obama was arriving and all roads into the city were being blocked off. Friday night, we ate at a top restaurant, Nobu. I couldn’t understand why there were police cars with flashing lights outside the restaurant all night, until we left. Then I found out we were around the corner from the US Embassy.
I never did see the flashing lights of the Ginza or the high tech stores on this trip. Maybe next time.